Passers-by inspect public art at Lafayette and Spring streets in New York's district of Nolita, an amalgam of North of Little Italy.

Photo: Chris Hardy, Special To The Chronicle

Passers-by inspect public art at Lafayette and Spring streets in...

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A fire escape in a brownstone provides a place for reading.

Photo: Chris Hardy, Special To The Chronicle

A fire escape in a brownstone provides a place for reading.

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A crowd spills out from Cafe Habana onto the sidewalk in the Nolita district of New York, which has become a more interesting and less expensive place to eat, drink, shop and wander in Lower Manhattan.

Photo: Chris Hardy, Special To The Chronicle

A crowd spills out from Cafe Habana onto the sidewalk in the Nolita...

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A waitress prepares for customers at Prince Street Cafe & Catering, one of many affordable restaurants in Nolita.

Back in the 1980s, the fringe streets around New York's SoHo were a true neighborhood.

A place where Italian ladies in black dresses went to St. Anthony's church every Wednesday for Bingo Night. Where screaming kids ran through the alley behind my fifth-floor walk-up on their way to Ben's Pizza for Italian ices. Where every autumn, as the thick humidity of summer blew away in the September winds, wooden fruit crates with California labels piled up along the curbsides (evidence of apartment winemaking), and over on West Broadway, all the fabulous one-of-a-kind shops reduced their summer dresses by 50 percent.

A place, in other words, where you'd go to get a taste of a "real NYC" neighborhood.

These days, SoHo (even its fringes) has turned into designer Disneyland, prompting New York magazine to run a piece calling SoHo more Upper East Side than the Upper East Side. A claim bolstered by the Tiffany store that's just opened on formerly grungy Greene Street.

And it's not just SoHo that's lost its neighborhood feel. Lately, Greenwich Village seems like a combination chain store mall and NYU campus. And as for Little Italy, a recent New York Times story reported that there were no actual born-in-Italy Italians living there (and only 5 percent of the current residents would call themselves Italian American). A visitor could be forgiven for thinking there are no authentic New York neighborhood experiences to be had in lower Manhattan.

Lucky thing there's Nolita (an amalgam of North of Little Italy), those formerly empty streets I would trek through on the journey between my SoHo walk-up in the '80s and my favorite Little Italy red-sauce joint. Now those streets are a destination in themselves. A neighborhood where the brick tenements are cheaper than SoHo's lofts for the young singles - and fewer young families - who live there.

Cheaper also for the one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants that used to fill up SoHo's formerly grungy streets. All of which makes Nolita a more interesting (and, by SoHo standards, less expensive) place to eat, drink, shop and wander in Lower Manhattan.

Here's how I do it. First, establish some boundaries. New York real estate agents, who can be a bit squishy with boundaries when it suits their commissions, define Nolita as the blocks bordered north and south by Houston and Kenmare streets, and east and west by Bowery and Broadway.

Second, establish a home base. For exploring Nolita, I like to stay in one of the first hotels to open below Houston Street (1996), the SoHo Grand. Maybe because this loft-inspired hotel opened in the nanoseconds before SoHo got too cool for its own good, but the SoHo Grand never makes me feel like I'm not quite hip enough to be staying there. Plus, they'll let guests borrow a bike (for free), which you can use to ride over to Nolita on the Grand Street bike lane.

Third, either bike or walk to Nolita (the walk takes less than 10 minutes) and start exploring. I generally wander the streets, stopping when I get hungry, or when I see something irresistible in a window. But it's useful to have a few recommendations.

Eat and drink: I love Tacombi at Fonda Nolita - tacos served from a VW bus inside a garage with Christmas lights and Spanish music blaring from lousy speakers. I also love that they spike the horchata with sake. Being from New Jersey, I'm no judge of Mexican food, but my L.A.-born-and-bred significant other gives Fonda Nolita two salsa-covered thumbs up.

At Cafe Habana, we're talking pork, pork and more pork. Cafe Habana's Cuban sandwich, which includes both pork and ham, was voted the Best in NYC. It's spicy and smoky. Its pulled pork Sloppy Joe is pretty terrific as well. This is the Nolita outpost of a wildly popular Brooklyn restaurant. In Brooklyn, they've got a sand beach. Here they've got 1950s-era Formica tables crowded into a silver diner-style building. The wildly popular part is the same though, so it's best to time your Latin pork feast for an off-hour.

Parm is what would happen if Carmela Soprano took cooking lessons and then let Meadow design her restaurant. Run by Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, the New York wunderkind of ItalianAmerican cuisine, Parm is old-school Italian cooking (baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, sausage and peppers) done really, really well. The atmosphere is casual, a long counter with seats in the back, and wallpaper I swear that my grandmother had in her kitchen. The menu is simple, everything can be ordered either as a hero, or on a platter with ziti or salad.

Torrisi Italian Specialties is what would happen if Carmella Soprano went to the Cordon Bleu and opened her own place. Also run by Carbone and Torrisi, this is their upscale place. Lace curtains, fixed-price menu, old-school Italian dishes elevated to all new heights. Make reservations, and go hungry.

Emporio is one of my Nolita favorites. I always stop at its casual bar toward the end of the day for a Campari and soda or a glass of wine - the restaurant is supposed to resemble a Roman grocery store; I don't see it, but I still like it - and always stay right in the front room for one of its smoky, thin-crust pizzas. (It may be possible that I've never actually seen the back dining room.)

Shop: New shops are always opening in Nolita, and the best way to scout them out is by walking the streets. Elizabeth between Prince and Spring is fertile shopping ground, as is most of Mott Street. Most clothing stores are one of a kind, owned and run by the designer.

I like Baby Blue Line on Mott, for not-too-pricey clothes you can wear anywhere. For those who are into vintage, Ina on Prince is a rare find. Ina's side-by-side men's and women's boutiques feature vintage designer items from the '50s through the '80s, all of it in pristine condition. Yes, it's a little spendy for vintage. But think how expensive this stuff was the first time around. Plus, both sides of Ina run very good sales.

I always try to do my Nolita shopping on Saturdays so I can visit Super! Market. This designers' market, held in the gym of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, is the best place to catch up-and-coming local clothing and jewelry designers before they blow up and you can't afford them.

Then if it's between March and December, I walk around the corner and stroll through the weekend Nolita street market on Prince. This little market - it's just a block long - is the perfect spot for original designs in jewelry and graphic T's.

Hang out: Every time I drop into McNally Jackson Books, I can forget that Manhattan has become the Land of the Barnes & Noble. This indie bookstore has a carefully curated selection of fiction and nonfiction, and a terrific cafe where I've spent way too much time reading beneath the flying books. It has recently put in a print-on-demand machine, where you can print out public domain works or self-publish your own tome.

Unless it's raining or the dead of winter, I never leave Nolita without sitting in the tree-shaded DeSalvio Playground on Spring Street, watching a couple of old-timers argue over their game of dominoes, or spying on a hipster couple staring into their iPhones like they were reading their own futures. Once in a while, I find the outline of a Skully box chalked on the macadam of the playground, and on hot days, I watch the toddlers running through the sprinkler rainbows.

Sitting there, I can almost believe that when I head back through the fence, there will be Italian ladies on their way to Wednesday Bingo Night, and wooden crates piled up against the curb, and screaming kids with Italian ice smeared across their mouths.

If you go

Getting There

Newark airport is much closer to lower Manhattan (via the Holland Tunnel) than the other New York airports, but be careful with your departure time. The Holland Tunnel is a major end-of-day commute route.